Drivers

The most recent Transport Capital Partners Survey reveals carriers experiencing problems finding not only qualified drivers, but also other qualified employees such as technicians, operations staff and fleet managers..

Truck drivers employed by Australia-based Toll Group at the company’s New Jersey division voted by a margin of nearly 70% to form a union and affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 469, according to a news release.

A lot can change in 10 years, and for the average owner-operator, a lot has changed. Todd Amen, CEO of ATBS, recently presented at TCA's Refrigerated Division Annual Meeting on how the owner-operator and his world has transformed in a decade's time.

It seems zombies are cool these days, with hit TV shows like "The Walking Dead" and books and movies like "World War Z." But being a "zombie recruiter" is not going to help you out at a time when good drivers are becoming more scarce than ever.

New data from the National Household Survey has found that the average age of a Canadian truck driver is 46, higher than the previous age of 44, and significantly higher than the national average of 41.5.

In the first quarter of 2013, the turnover rate at both large and small truckload carriers rose due to the improving economy and continued competition for well-trained professional drivers, reports the American Trucking Associations.

The North American Fatigue Management Program is now available to motor carriers, drivers, government safety administrators and insurance companies. A coalition of Canadian, U.S., and Mexican trucking interests developed the program to provide carriers with a best-practices manual for implementing fatigue management in their operations.

Federal safety officials have a vision for a driver fitness rating system, but it will take close to a decade to get it done. In a recent report to Congress, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration outlined a nine-year plan to develop the system, contingent on getting its other work done and obtaining the resources for the job.

While capacity is important, the DOT's new CSA enforcement regime and ever-nosier agencies like the IRS make it clear that you simply can't take people that need to be led by the hand into a lease-purchase program.

Trucking companies, drivers and the general public who shares the road with trucks would all benefit from an approach that treats truck driver health as an ongoing project rather than every-other-year paperwork – and the new National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners could be a step in that direction.

The 2013 Fleet Safety Conference, scheduled for June 25-27 at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel, in Schaumburg, Ill., will feature a session on what fleets should know about the federal government's increased scrutiny of the health and wellness of commercial drivers, from tougher medical card requirements to sleep disorders.

HDT Editor in Chief Deborah Lockridge recently wrote an editorial about why the trucking industry needs more women. She then got taken to task for making the assumption that you needed automatic transmissions to attract women drivers -- but as she says in her most recent blog post, maybe she should have focused on pet policies instead.

Opponents of an "employee misclassification bill" passed Thursday by the New Jersey state Senate say they will continue to work to make sure the measure does not actually become law. The legislation creates a presumption that a work arrangement in the drayage trucking or parcel delivery trucking industries is an employer-employee relationship.

One trucking company has agreed to pay to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, while the agency has filed separate litigation against another over claims of religious discrimination.